She Was a Liar
by Kuchengelybber
Summary: At the age of 21 Amy's already living her idea of a perfect life... and then runs it down letting lies become a habit until her castle of lies crashes almost six years later and her life and her heart with it.


Hello,  
so this is my first short story, I think. My first one in English anyway. And my first one on this site. And the first one about Everwood. I'm not sure what to think of it, I tried a new style.  
Well, I don't want to waste your time so I'll tell you right now that English isn't my first language, I learned it at school, for nine years by now I think. My marks are pretty good so far, but I don't know what that really means. So I can't promise you I haven't made any mistakes, though I've proofread this quite a few times. I hope it's okay, but if it's not and you don't like to read it, please just don't, I've warned you.  
Oh, and I'm sorry if I gave the story the wrong rating, the definitions really confused me a lot, but I've been thinking for quite a while about it and thought this would fit, I'd like advice, though.  
Of course I'd be more than glad about reviews, even if you didn't like the story, just, please, be polite and not unfriendly. I'd be really happy about it if you helped me improving my English skills in telling me what I do wrong. It'd really help a lot.  
Thank you and have fun reading, hopefully.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything, of course! And I'm not making any profit with this story, I'm just a poor student.

* * *

**_She Was a Liar_**

Amy Abbott was twenty-one when she got pregnant for the first time. Amy Abbott was twenty-one, too, when she turned into Amy Brown. Amy Abbott was twenty-one when she turned her life into a lie.

_"When's daddy coming home?"_

It started the day she woke up naked in a hotel room; alone and with a major headache.  
It ended the day Ephram found out.

It was not a blackout. It had not been involuntary.

She felt so dizzy scrambling to her feet, that she almost fell. A sharp pain shot right through her head, from one temple to the other one, the only remnant of the last night's intoxication. The morning sun's golden light spread through the room despite the fact that the curtains were closed. Her sleepy eyes ached as she saw nothing but light. She wanted to get out, get away. She shivered, for she knew that she was naked and she knew what it meant, too. Likely she hadn't dreamed. Her eyes finally adjusted to the light and she found herself standing in the room alone. Nobody else was around, the bed was empty. She swallowed the lump in her throat down and her hoarse voice squeaked quietly for Ephram to come, but who wasn't there couldn't come to hold her when she needed him to.  
She searched the room for evidence. Had to know if she had really done what she thought she had. There was none. Just her shed clothes everywhere in the room. The bathroom was scrupulously clean, not used at all, still everything seemed to be dirty. The hotel room had witnessed her cheating, she knew she had cheated, though she didn't remember everything about the goings-on the night before. She was dirty. She was a whore.  
Hadn't she told him she'd be home early? Hadn't she promised him the best night he'd ever had? Hadn't she wanted him and him only as she had to leave for an old friend's twenty-first birthday party in Denver. _"Just one hug, a drink and I'll be back."_ What had happened to her plans between the hug and the drink? Or had it been after the drink?  
She felt awful. She loved Ephram so much, knew he trusted her without a doubt at all. And she had cheated... without a doubt at all. "Ephram?" He wasn't there. It was no use. He was at home, where he was supposed to be. He hadn't been the man she had spent the night with.  
She started crying. She hated being herself, she hated making mistakes all the time when all she wanted was to be a good human being.

_She fiddled with her son's jacket as she dressed him for going to the playground and smiled at the little boy sadly._

As she, still naked and by then weeping like a baby, walked back into the room she spotted the money lying on the night stand. Oh, she'd never felt so dirty. What had she done?  
What had she done? She sobbed loudly. Had that man thought she was a prostitute? Did she look like a prostitute?  
She started gathering her clothes, telling herself he'd left the money there so she could pay for the hotel room. Not because he wanted to thank her for the night. She wasn't a prostitute. She wouldn't take the money. She got dressed quickly but didn't feel any better not being naked anymore.  
She left, she paid – with her own money – and went looking for her car. She found it at the bar, where she'd left it before the birthday party and drove home – crying all the way, wondering what to do, wondering what to tell Ephram, how to explain that she hadn't known what she was doing while knowing she'd probably lose him. She couldn't lose him... he was her whole world.  
She was all cried out by the time she parked her car in front of the house at about nine in the morning and hurried inside to the first floor, everything she wanted was to get rid of the dirt. Still she stopped in front of their door, because she had to find the keys and because she knew her life would change, soon. Right when she had found the perfect life, she'd lose it. She had ruined it. She was such a loser... and people thought she was a prostitute.  
She quietly snuck into the apartment, getting out of her dirty clothes right at the front-door, as she realized Ephram wasn't up yet. She still had a headache.  
Then she went into the bathroom.

_She touched the boy's brown hair, looked into his brown eyes and wished she'd finally see Ephram's features, but she didn't._

The hot water ran over her body, cleaned her, she rubbed the dirt, that didn't even exist, off with tons of soap. She got clean, at least, but she didn't get comfort. "You haven't come home tonight." She froze. "No." Turned off the water. She opened the door of the shower cubicle and gave him a scared look. But he was being Ephram. He wasn't mad, he was concerned, "I've been worrying."  
"I know," she started sobbing again, "I'm sorry."  
"Amy..." his expression changed from concerned to worried as he hurried over and pulled her wet body into his arms not caring about that he was getting wet himself. Another proof for how much he loved her, another reason to hate herself even more.  
"Shhh... don't cry... what's wrong?", he kissed her forehead. She cuddled into his arms, finding comfort for which she would do _anything_ to keep it. She breathed in his scent. She couldn't live without him. Her life was endangered. She had to say it, to tell him, or she knew she never would. "Promise you won't be mad." Of course he would be mad. He turned her body skillfully so that her lips fell onto his and he kissed her. The kiss was the promise. He leaned his forehead against hers and looked into her eyes, "tell me."  
"I got drunk..." she started and she saw the look on his face, she saw the love and suddenly it wasn't about herself anymore at all. It was about him. All about him. She couldn't hurt him. "So I couldn't drive home." She paused for a while. But could she lie to him? "I got myself a hotel room... and forgot to call you."  
She started to cry again. "Ephram..." she had lied to him, her life had changed. "I'm sorry. I love you. I love you..."

_She kissed the little boy's forehead. Daddy's not coming home. Daddy's not daddy._

She found the complete comfort in the shower – with Ephram – after lying to him. He made her feel clean, he made her feel innocent, he made her feel complete; the other man had made her feel the complete opposite with same actions. Ephram meant the "I love you"s.  
Ephram was special. Ephram loved her and she loved him. She was desperate for his love. She showed him in trying to seduce him 24/7 – wherever they were.  
That need slowly ceased first when she started to get sick in the mornings, started to realize that she was pregnant. She didn't even give a thought on being a mom at the age of twenty-one, worrying about other things. It had to be Ephram's. It had been just one time, it couldn't be the other one's.  
But her heart dropped as she heard the date she had conceived the baby. It wasn't Ephram's.  
It wasn't his and he had to know. She spent days planning on how to tell him that she was having a baby; that she was having a baby that very likely wasn't his. She spent days on getting used to the thought of living without Ephram, raising a child that wasn't Ephram's. She was being unfair but she didn't want a child that wasn't his. She didn't want it at all.

_He was five now. He had a little brother._

Ephram hugged her as she told him that she was pregnant. He didn't even hear her out, he stopped her from finally telling the truth. Smashed her courage that had been little anyway. He hugged her and told her he loved her and that they'd be okay and that it didn't matter that they were only twenty-one.  
He promised her the world, he was so happy... and she couldn't tell. She couldn't end it. She couldn't stop it anymore. Her feet were stuck too deeply in the mud already.

He married her when she was four months pregnant, because of the baby, but because he loved her, too. It wasn't like she didn't love him back, it wasn't like she didn't love him as much as he loved her, but it was still a lie and she felt terrible. Every day. Every minute. Every time she realized once again, that her child might not be his. Always.  
The guilt was overwhelming and after Michael had been born, it got even worse: Michael didn't look like Ephram, at least she felt he didn't. Ephram didn't realize, or at least didn't care, telling her the kid looked so much like her. Ephram loved him. Ephram loved him so very much, never left his side, always carried him around the apartment when he was home. Michael didn't mind, he was never in a better mood than around Ephram. They had a connection, _father and son_. But he wasn't Ephram's, every day she looked at him and didn't see Ephram in that tiny baby's face it reminded her of it. Baby Michael must've sensed that, because sometimes he was just as uncomfortable around her as she was around him. She couldn't accept him at first, she just couldn't, though she grew to love the child pretty soon. He was her son after all, even if he wasn't Ephram's.  
Ephram made her feel guilty deep down inside every time she looked at him, every time she kissed him, held him. Her subconscious mind, though, soon tried to solve the problem, taking over her body and actions in moments of passion to make her bear Ephram a natural child. Nick. Nicolas. He was just one year and four months younger than Michael.  
While Michael turned out to be the absolute opposite of the Ephram she knew, athletic, wild, popular in kindergarten, brilliant in everything he started, slightly tricky or even deceptive sometimes, still fearful and didn't even like music, Nick was a copy of his father, quiet, calm, highly intelligent but not using it, impressively reliable, attentive, sensitive, shy, yet strong and brave, affectionate and totally crazy about music. Even the looks Nick had in common with Ephram, having brown hair and blue eyes; Ephram's nose an even his lips and eyebrows. Nicky was a mommy-child – unlike Michael – who followed her through the house, they had moved into before his birth, all the time.  
Michael's eyes were brown. His nose was much more delicate than Ephram's and his lips and eyebrows Amy didn't recognize. Ephram, though, kept telling her the boy looked like her. She couldn't see it.

_Michael was still waiting for an answer. When's daddy coming home?_

"What do you mean?", Ephram asked staring at her shocked, "what do you mean by 'that's true'? I just said 'he can't be my son'... Amy?"  
Michael had turned five two weeks earlier, had, the day she told Ephram, won a soccer match with his team. It had been a joke, _"he can't be my son"_, of course Ephram knew Michael was his.  
But Amy...  
Almost six years after her life had turned into a lie, she couldn't remember anymore how she'd been able to live with herself all that time... and she couldn't bear another day. She had been given the opportunity and she had taken it.  
"He... I don't know if he's yours... I... I... he doesn't look like you."  
"He's not mine?", she could see all the happiness leave his body, "I'm not his _daddy_?"  
"I don't know."  
"You cheated on me."  
"I-- I was drunk. I didn't know what I was doing! I'm sorry, I'm so--"  
"But you did know what you were doing when you lied to me, didn't you? Hell, you lied to me for six years! I trusted you!", he yelled at her, "I trusted you and loved you and you... you just... you're a whore!"  
_Whore_. There she had it, now not just strangers thought so anymore, her own husband did. She had never been that hurt before.  
_She had never felt so dirty before._  
She saw he hadn't meant to hurt her that badly as she saw his features soften for just a second.  
Then he started yelling again.  
"What about Nick, huh? Is he mine or have you been cheating on me all the time?! Did you ever love me at all?!"  
"I love you," she whispered, "and Nick's yours. It was just once."  
She was crying.  
He was crying.  
"It's over." He stated. "You don't love me, you wouldn't have lied to me if you loved me."  
"I-i-it's over?" No. God, no, not that.  
"Yes."  
He started packing his bags then, she heard him mumble from time to time while she was sitting curled up on their bed crying. "Michael's my son. He _is_ my son..."  
"Please don't go," she whined. "I can't stay, Amy." – "We could take a test and see if he's--", she wanted to suggest but he didn't let her finish. "He'd get suspicious then and he mustn't know, I'm his daddy. I'll always be," he looked at her sadly, "it's not about whether he's my son or not. It's about that you lied to me. I trusted you, but you lied."  
"Can't we fix it?" What an awfully stupid question.  
He shook his head and looked down as he whispered with almost no voice at all: "Don't think so."  
He asked her to tell the kids he loved them and that he was going to call them the next day and broke her heart all over again as he quietly said "I love you" with a tone telling her she'd never hear it again. And she knew it was her fault.

_It had been two days since he had left, two hours since he had called and only talked to Michael and Nick. She was a wreck. She was broken, she had built up her life on lies and it had broken down, she didn't know how to live without them anymore. _

_"Soon." _

_It started the day she tried to protect her children from heartache... _

_Michael Brown was five years old when Amy Brown started lying to him, sixteen years younger than his natural father as she had started lying to him. And one day, just like his daddy, her son would hate her for lying, but at that moment the lie was best, care about the future later, Amy tended to forget that there even was one. Especially now that she didn't have one anymore.  
She had turned into a liar and she had lost the ability to change.  
The guilt had taken her everything. It had taken her the ability to see, that her first son had _her_ nose and _her_ eyes, to realize that his character was so much like hers as she was a child, still was, to see that with truth her life would've been perfect.  
The guilt was the only thing she could still identify with.  
Life had happened to her and pushed her to be somebody she had never wanted to be.  
She had lost the game.  
She hated herself.  
She was broken.  
She was lonely.  
She was a liar._


End file.
